La Luna hovers above Thayer Street, not quite in the sky, but above the horizon, in a manner of speaking. It’s up outside steps on a second floor — where Montana used to be, as we say in Rhode Island.
Inside, a redecoration last year has given it a modern look, with walls in nightclub colors — both shocking pink and boudoir pink, for a nice bad girl tension.
The menu offers dozens of little items, tempting you to spread out an array of tastes, as at a tapas bar. Instead of being just another dinner spot, the restaurant apparently is trying to draw Brown students to linger, nosh, and drink after a movie or date. Pick at an Asian chicken salad and argue foreign policy. The night we were there, what used to be a longer list of entrées was pared to only three, although seven pasta dishes were above them on the menu, with one extra item in each category as a special.
Furthering the snacking possibilities, while there used to be only a pizza of the day, now there are five. The signature La Luna pizza sounds very tasty and moon-over-Spago: grilled chicken and ham, with roasted red peppers, slathered with chef Stanley Kobierowski’s blend of honey-mustard under the mozzarella. The lunch list of sandwiches and wraps is carried over to the evening menu, in case your tummy’s time sense has been shifted by an exam all-nighter. (One of the student clientele should be offered a free meal to weed the menu of its distracting frequency of typos and misspellings, often a warning of similar carelessness in the kitchen.)
But with one or two exceptions, careful preparations were the rule on our visit. Our basket of tasty Italian bread was fresh, hot, and accompanied by a better quality of olive oil, speckled with herbs, than they could have gotten away with. It’s just the thing to set the mood while you discuss what to order, sipping one of the many wines available by the glass.
The first category on the menu is “Lite Bites,” with all but one item under $10. Choices range from Italian (bruschetta and four versions of calamari), through middle American (hot spinach and artichoke dip), to Asian (chicken satay and coconut shrimp).
We were with a generous and adventurous couple, so for purposes of edifying you, dear readers, we picked two starters that would normally never be ordered together. Don’t try this at home: “La Luna Famous Garlic Rolls” and Thai chicken-lettuce wraps. The rolls were small and pricey, but tasty (three for $4.50, six for $8.50), small, pleasantly dense, and topped with both grated and shaved cheeses. The small bowl of marinara dipping sauce on the side got a range of ratings at our table, but I found it reasonably flavorful.
The lettuce wraps were a unanimous hit. Four inner Romaine leaves were served with strips of grilled satay chicken, pickled red cabbage, and a chopped tomato salsa with hints of lime juice and cilantro. A thick peanut sauce was there for the slathering. A well enjoyed beginning.
